Total situational awareness since 2004.

January 28, 2009

In The Interest Of Fairness...

And sorry for the lack of posting this week, I have two pretty big applications due this Friday and I'm busy writing essays left right and center.

Anyway, in the interest of fairness, here are two recent opinion pieces coming out strongly against centralizing arts policy in the US government under one high ranking position (aka the Arts Czar which could be a Minister of Culture type cabinet level position or a special advisor to the President or whatever).

The first is from the Wall St. Journal, the second is from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. I find both of the pretty damn unconvincing. The Times-Dispatch raises the only anti-centralization point that gives me any sense of pause which is... won't increased government support and action w/r/t the arts inevitably lead down the road at some point to censorship and interference? Which is something I think we need to grapple with further.

I will also say I think in general arts advocates have not done a great job of laying out why we need an Arts Czar or some form of centralized Arts Policy Person in place in the Executive Branch, something I tried to do here. The petition, for example, doesn't lay out what an Arts Czar would do. This opens up the door to all sorts of straw manning. You would think reading either of the above opinion pieces that there's a concrete job description that everyone's coalesced around. There isn't. What there is is a feeling in the zeitgeist, something people are agitating for that still remains somewhat vague. (For more on what such a position could do and how the stimulus might work to help the arts, here's an overview article from the Times).

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won't increased government support and action w/r/t the arts inevitably lead down the road at some point to censorship and interference?

Doesn't America's lack of public support for the arts, which is absurdly low by the standards of any other Western nation, also have consequences about what kind of work gets produced? This argument assumes that no public funding for the arts is some kind of neutral baseline position, which is absurd. It's also a standard rightwing trope, that government involvement is "interference" and unrestritcted capitalism is the natural state of things. I think we've seen where that mindset gets us.

I have to admit I'm deeply skeptical about a centralized "Arts Czar." Other than explicit censorship the sort of pervasive structural incentives that federal centralized funding would, I think, be really bad for art.

The chapter on Copland & the WPA in "The Rest is Noise" is really essential background reading for this whole discussion.

"Other than explicit censorship the sort of pervasive structural incentives that federal centralized funding would, I think, be really bad for art."

Name any modern Western nation that has substantial federal arts funding where said funding has actually hurt that country's artistic and cultural output.

The idea that, for example, the Canada Council for the Arts is a net negative for the arts in Canada is risible. You'd have trouble finding a single working artist anywhere in Canada who subscribes to that view.

Seriously, the fears over what might happen if the Feds invest in America's cultural infrastructure -- in other words, bring the USA in line with what is *completely standard in the rest of the developed world* -- are highly overblown and almost totally irrational. It's like the way the right wing likes to stoke nebulous fears about what might happen if we implement "socialized medicine." Or you could, you know, actually look at what *does* happen in other countries.

Sure, let's move to the concrete: The way that the Wien Modern is organized & the composers they choose to focus on miss a huge chunk of what's going on with composers today. And I'm not saying that it's a net negative, just that there are other ways we might go about helping artists than some federal art's czar.

There are other things the government could be doing at a federal level-like universal health care-that would be a huge benefit to artists. But I think there is way more of a downside to doing this at a federal level than those arguing for an Art's Czar are really thinking through.

"The way that the Wien Modern is organized & the composers they choose to focus on miss a huge chunk of what's going on with composers today."

Agreed, but that begs the question...

What's that you say? You anticipated my question?

"And I'm not saying that it's a net negative"

Well, okay then. My view is that Austria's public support for the arts unquestionably makes Austria a vastly better place for artists -- even those marginalized by the specific music festival you mention.

"There are other things the government could be doing at a federal level-like universal health care-that would be a huge benefit to artists."

I agree! But it's not a zero-sum game. Despite the current economic crisis, the US remains the richest country on Earth. Surely we can do both. Like, you know, Canada. And France. And Germany. And Sweden. And... you get the idea.

"But I think there is way more of a downside to doing this at a federal level than those arguing for an Art's Czar are really thinking through."

It's not like the American arts scene as it stands is particularly well-nurtured, and I fail to see how an American Arts Council (modeled after something like the Canada Council for the Arts, which pretty much everybody agrees is a great model) would make things worse, rather than substantially better.